


Tear the Old One Down

by asocialconstruct



Series: To Build a Better World [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Hydra wins, Depression, M/M, POV Sam Wilson, Post-Recovery Bucky Barnes, Recovery, Road Trips, Sam-Centric, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-06
Updated: 2016-10-06
Packaged: 2018-08-19 20:25:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8223736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asocialconstruct/pseuds/asocialconstruct
Summary: Sequel for To Build a Better World, and probably won't make much sense unless you read that first.--They're ok.  It's just the past few weeks on the road getting to him, but they're alive, and they're going to be ok once they figure out where Cho and Potts and Stark and Vision are.  No big deal.  Rescue everyone from terrifying nightmare ocean prison, undo Steve’s brain damage, ride into the sunset.  They do action movie shit on the regular these days, what’s a little scifi medical magic on top of it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Oh boy, here we go, the recovery fic that will probably please no one because there won't be much recovery. The Rape/Noncon tag is for past events; there will be nothing in the present timeline, but there will be discussion of past events.
> 
> Real life is kicking my ass lately, so please be forgiving if updates are slow.

******Sam**

It's fine.

Sam is fine.

It's just bodywash.

Except that Steve and Bucky did the last grocery run together, and Sam can hardly breathe past the smell of Rumlow's bodywash and the thought that Steve or Bucky picked it out without thinking about why.

If asked, they'd probably say they got it because it was on sale. Simple. But Steve hasn't made the same paint-stripping-bad coffee since they brought him back and Sam knows exactly why. Steve makes coffee like Rollins and pancakes like Rumlow, and what's worse is Bucky does too and neither of them know it. It’d kill Bucky if Sam ever said anything about it, so he doesn’t. It’s just coffee. And pancakes.

And now bodywash.

And the way they both sit on the couch nothing like they used to. And the way they flank him, one to each side, like they're marching him down a hall.

Sam's fine.

Steve and Bucky are fine.

When Sam steadies his breathing enough to get out of the shower, Bucky's reading on the couch of their little motel room, one arm thrown over the back of it as Steve sleeps like a dead thing on one of the beds.

Steve spends most of his time these days sleeping, and it wouldn't be so bad, wouldn't hurt so much if it seemed like it was doing him any good. Bucky says he slept a lot of the time when he was on his way back to himself too, but by the time Sam knew him, he talked, even if it was just to alternate between terrifying and manipulatively charming.

Steve just—sleeps and waits for orders. Bucky says he’s fine. Sam’s not sure who he’s lying to, Sam or himself.

Sam sits heavily next to Bucky in his towel, too tired to dig clean clothes out of his duffel. Might not even be any, anyway. He doesn’t have the energy to think about a laundromat run.

“You ok?” Bucky says, bringing his arm down off the back of the couch to rub the back of Sam's neck. He’s reading the actual paper newspaper; more police shootings; another bombing in DC; more voter ID laws. Sam doesn’t have the stomach to read the news much lately.

“Yeah,” Sam says, leaning into him, letting Bucky work some of the knots out of his neck with his metal thumb. Bucky pulls him close, tucking Sam against his side. “I don't know. Just tired.” They're ok. It's just the past few weeks on the road getting to him, but they're alive, and they're going to be ok once they figure out where Cho and Pepper and Tony and Vision are.

No big deal. Rescue everyone from terrifying nightmare ocean prison, undo Steve’s brain damage, ride into the sunset. They do action movie shit on the regular these days, what’s a little scifi medical magic on top of it.

Bucky hums, turning his face into Sam's hair, and it's ok. It's practically like before, with Steve taking a nap after a run and Bucky just holding him. Sam lets some of the tension drain out of him, rolling his neck under Bucky's hands.

“You smell good,” Bucky says, and Sam closes his eyes.

* * *

**Pepper**

_Wilson, Khan, Chavez, Romanoff and Rhodes are wanted in connection with the murders of three Department of Homeland Security Shield a_ _g_ _ents and are believed to be armed and very dangerous._ _Authorities believe_ _that Wilson has separated to make contact with another_ _terrorist_ _cell in western Canada but he is not believed to be traveling alone. Shield agent Brock Rumlow, Wilson's former parole officer, says that Wilson may have been radicalized during a recent incarceration for weapons trafficking charges and may be attempting to recruit_ _vulnerable young women like Khan and Chavez_ _. Extreme caution should be exercised by anyone encountering Wilson and there is a reward for information leading to his recapture._  
  
Pepper rolls her head towards the TV, muzzy on the sedatives they give her.

Nat and Jim are alive.

Unless this is another hallucination; she can't tell the difference as much lately. In the beginning they were of being rescued, Tony and Jim coming crashing through the walls, but lately they're of everyone dying, and this seems like one of those.

It might be real, though, she doesn't have any memories to dredged up the haggard looking black man with his beard and broken teeth on the TV.

 _"Look,"_ someone is saying on the TV, a lean man about Pepper's age who might have been handsome before all the burn scars.

Maybe this is a hallucination, one of the ones where everyone's skin boils off and the walls are full of insects.

 _"Terrorists like Wilson only want one thing, and that's for normal Americans to live their lives in fear. Shield has the situation under control, and once we get Wilson, Romanoff and Rhodes in custody, they won't see the light of day for a very, very long time,”_ the TV says. “ _At this point we're mainly concerned with the welfare of Ms. Khan and Ms. Maximoff, who were young ladies with a lot of potential before they fell under_ _Wilson and Rhodes' influence_ _. Right now we're hoping to avoid another Elizabeth Smart_ _or Jaycee Dugard_ _situation, if it's not already too late. These_ _anti-government_ _terrorist cells have already shown a propensity for brainwashing idealistic young women,_ _like_ _we saw with the Bartons and their hostage Ms. Bishop."_

Did that happen? Clint and Steve died a while ago, or should have, but maybe that was a hallucination and this is real. Hard to tell any more.

* * *

**Sam**

Steve sits and watches complacently while they pack, tracking their movements but not moving otherwise, until Bucky hands him a gun and tells him to break it down and clean it. He’s terrifyingly good at it, better than he used to be, and it makes Sam’s skin crawl even more than the reminder that Hydra still has Steve’s shield because they ran without it. Because Steve without the shield is still Steve; Steve like this is—whatever Hydra made him into.

Sam folds his dirty laundry on the dirty hotel coverlet to pack into his dirty duffel so he doesn’t have to see it. Steve will be fine.

Bucky says Steve talks, but Sam hasn't heard more than a one-word answer to a direct question from him in the weeks they've been on the run. It's getting near winter, almost a year out of Hydra summer camp, and Sam'll cry if he asks Steve a question and just gets that vacant, blue-eyed look again.

Sam’s got his duffel mostly packed when Bucky goes into the bathroom and pulls his shirt off, half turning to grimace at the bloody dressing in the mirror.

Bucky hisses, pulling the dressing away from the stitches Nat gave him across the back of his shoulder. Sam leaves the duffel on the bed and ignores the way Steve tracks him, like being pinned under a spotlight, going to hover in the bathroom door and get a better look at Bucky’s stitches. It’s not infected—Steve and Bucky don’t do infections—but it is ugly, barely clotted and still oozing slowly even though it’s been almost two weeks since Bucky took shrapnel meant for Sam.

Bucky lays out gauze and tape on the bathroom counter, looking grim in the harsh fluorescents as he reaches around to daub his stitches with a piece of gauze.

“Let me get that,” Sam says, but Bucky jerks his shoulder away before Sam even gets hands on him.

“I got it,” Bucky says.

“You can’t change a dressing on the back of your shoulder one handed, let me get the tape at least.”

Bucky puts his back to the wall as Sam reaches for him. Not out of reach in the tiny, cramped little bathroom, but miles away. “Yeah, but just—look, just go get Nat, she knows how.”

“Bucky, I—”

“Sam,” Bucky says, looking pained. “Just get Nat to do it. Please.”

Sam backs off, sitting heavily on the bed. He should go get Nat, but he just—can’t quite get his knees to cooperate right then.

“Steve,” Bucky says. “Go get Nat. Please,” he adds, after Steve’s already up and halfway to the door without a word. Sam puts his head in his hands.

* * *

Sam and Nat spread out maps on the hotel bed after she changes Bucky’s dressing and Bucky and Steve disappear somewhere together. Sam tries not to think about it, tracing fingers over the winding state highways they’ll take to meet up with Danvers. If there’s any mercy, her parents’ old place is far enough far enough off the grid that they can rest for a few weeks, lick their wounds and figure out next steps now that they have to rescue the Bartons and Bishop too.

Sam can hear Rhodes and Chavez packing the cars, joking around like they really are father and daughter like their fake IDs say they are. They sound so goddamn normal it makes Sam selfishly wish he could he could crawl home to his mother’s place and sleep for a thousand years, but that normal is long gone.

“So,” Nat says when they have the routes laid out. “We’ll rendezvous with Hill, Maximoff and Khan in Sioux Falls, and we’ll meet up with you, Rogers and Barnes in Minot before we make contact with Danvers.”

Twelve hours in the car with Steve silent and Bucky pretending his hardest that everything’s fine, Sam stares down the barrel of it. They’ve driven across the country and back for near a year, and today Sam just can’t take the thought of another twelve hours, not when his hair smells like Rumlow and Steve makes his skin crawl.

“Nat, I can't. I just—can't,” Sam says.

She looks him up and down, and he should feel ashamed of himself, should feel exposed under her measuring look because she already knows exactly what he means, but he's so far past that. He's just tired, is all, tired of being scared of Steve and Bucky, tired of Bucky being scared of him. At least Bucky he can talk to.

Steve is just—gone.

“Okay,” Nat says after a while, and Sam sags. “Steve'll ride with us. We'll see you in Minot.”

* * *

Bucky kicks his feet up on the dash and they get McDonald’s hashbrowns for breakfast, like they're on a normal road trip out to Wall-Drug, like they're not driving a piece of shit stolen out of a junk yard because they can't get out of the country. Bucky gets more cows on his side, but Sam gets all the graveyards, so he’s winning by the time they pull in for gas and a bathroom break, like it's a halfway normal, pleasant morning.

Sam’s coming out of the bathroom of the Casey’s gas station when he runs headlong into his nightmares. “Long time no see, sunshine,” Rumlow says.

"No," Sam says, and Rumlow smiles. He looks just like he did when Sam stabbed him, tight t-shirt and jeans, with a Carhartt jacket just like the locals.  All he's missing is the shoulder holster and the stun baton.  "You're dead. I killed you and you're dead."

"It didn't stick," Rumlow says brightly.

Bucky looms up behind Rumlow because this isn’t Sam’s nightmares, it’s really happening, and more’s the pity, because Sam wakes up from his nightmares. Sam can’t see it, but Bucky’s got a gun, pressing it into the small of Rumlow’s back as Bucky shoves him into the men’s room, Sam following with a glance over his shoulder to see if the cashier saw.

“Tell me why I shouldn't shoot you in the fucking face right now,” Bucky snarls, shoving Rumlow up against the bathroom wall.

“I can get you Cho and Potts,” Rumlow says, smug grin falling off his face whiplash fast, like when he told Sam that Steve and Bucky were both just as dead. “I've got encryption keys and I can tell you how much they know about this little caped crusader thing you've got going.”

“Bullshit,” Bucky says.

“They'll be here in about a half hour,” Rumlow says, and actually shrugs with Bucky’s pistol shoved into his liver. “You want to know which route out of town they're not covering, you can take me with you. Or not.”

“Or he can lead us right to them,” Bucky says.

"We have to call Nat," Sam says.

"I wouldn't, if I were you,” Rumlow says pleasantly. “They've got your phones pinged. How you think I found you?"

"He's lying," Bucky says immediately.

Rumlow shrugs. "Your call."

"He's lying," Bucky says again. "He just wants us to get rid of our phones, cut us off from everyone else."

Except. Except Rumlow never lied to Sam, except they’ve been trying to get Potts and Stark and Cho and Vision for the better part of the year and gotten nowhere but getting the Bartons arrested and acquiring a couple of teenage sidekicks.

“What do you get out of this?” Sam says. It’s claustrophobic in the tiny bathroom with the three of them, and all Sam can smell is Rumlow, and cheap industrial soap, and the bile he retched up the last time he was trapped in a tiny tiled room with Rumlow and Bucky.

Rumlow makes a face like someone farted. “The hell do you think? You saw what shit was going down, the hell do you think happened after you flew the coop?”

“What do you get out of it,” Sam says again.

Rumlow gives him a long, level look, and Sam makes himself hold his look even though it’s the last thing in the world he wants. The only thing worse than having to look Rumlow in the eye after all this time would be letting him win.

“I get payback on all those fucking backstabbers,” Rumlow says finally.

Sam lets out a breath, his back stiff. “C’mon,” Sam says, making himself put a hand on Rumlow’s elbow to steer them out of the bathroom. “We’re not shooting him in a gas station bathroom.” Bucky makes a disgruntled noise but doesn’t say anything about it, following Sam’s lead. Sam’s hands don’t shake, and thank God for it.

When they make it out of the store, what feels like miles later, Bucky shoves Rumlow into the front passenger seat, Sam assumes because there's too many witnesses to just shove him in the trunk.  Bucky digs handcuffs out of his duffel to cuff Rumlow to the door before closing it, and Sam doesn’t ask how long he’s had the handcuffs. They haven’t fucked in weeks, not with Steve like he is and always sharing a room, not that Sam’s interested in cuffs these days anyway.

“So what're we going to do with him?” Sam says, wishing he didn't even have to ask the question. He shoves his hands in his pockets against the wind, leaning against the car. They were due to switch cars in Minot, but maybe they should try to steal another sooner, if Rumlow found them. They shouldn’t be hanging around like this, two white guys and a black guy sticking out like a sore thumb in this Iowa gas station parking lot even if Hydra’s not closing in.

“Kill him,” Bucky says, flat. “It shouldn't even be a question.”

“We need what he’s got,” Sam says. He doesn’t look at Rumlow sitting in the passenger seat, he doesn’t look at traffic going by, he doesn’t look at Bucky. He doesn’t look at much at all.

“He's a liar and a rapist,” Bucky says. “Look what he did to Steve. Look what he did to _you_.”

“How else are we going to get Potts and Cho out? It's been a year, this is our best chance.”

“ _He's playing you_ ,” Bucky snarls.

“I don't care if he's playing me,” Sam snaps right back. “I'm not leaving them in there if we have a chance of getting them out. If it were me or Steve, would you have shot Rumlow in the head if there was a chance of getting us out?”

Bucky doesn’t have anything to say to that for a minute, crossing his arms over his chest to glare at Rumlow through the car door. Rumlow just looks back placidly.

“He's playing you,” Bucky says finally, “and he's going to stab us in the back as soon as he gets the chance. I'm not letting Hydra take you or Steve again. You tried to kill him once, why is this any different?”

“It's not,” Sam says. “I'll slit his throat myself. C’mon,” Sam says, and opens the driver’s door.


End file.
